Apple TV’s new crime thriller Camboy is the perfect summer binge

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Comment: Maximum Fun Guaranteed on Apple TV is a fun and bizarre series enhanced by intelligent writing, unpredictable twists and turns and a remarkable performance from Tatiana Maslany.

Aaron covers what’s exciting and new in the world of home entertainment and streaming TV. Previously, he wrote about entertainment for places like Rotten Tomatoes, Inverse, TheWrap and The Hollywood Reporter. Aaron is also an actor and a stay-at-home dad, which means coffee is his friend.

Apple TV and sex workers – who would have thought they would make such a delicious couple? Earlier this year, the streaming service released the drama series Margo has money problemsbased on the book of the same name, which follows a young woman as she turns to camera work to support herself and her new baby.

It’s a great show, and you should definitely check it out. That said, I must emphasize that this article is not about that Apple TV show; this is a different problem involving the same sort of thing – and it involves blackmail, fraud and murder. This sounds heavy, I know, but I assure you that the series I’m talking about is a comedy. A dark comedy, mind you, but still.

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is the program I’m talking about. The series releases new episodes every Wednesday Apple TV and is in the middle of its first season. If everything I’ve said so far has piqued your interest, keep reading, because here’s a show you should pay attention to.

Learn more: This horror comedy on Apple TV is fun, scary, and one of the best shows of the year

The gist of Maximum Fun Guaranteed is quite simple: a divorced mother who falls in love with a webcam artist finds herself embroiled in a precarious (and very violent) situation after seeing Trevor (Brandon Flynn), the camboy in question, get attacked during one of their video sessions.

Tatiana Maslany plays Paula, the mother in question, and, as we’ve seen through her remarkable work in Black Orphan — where she played 17 different characters — she has the courage to carry a high-profile series on her back. And hoo-golly, she’s working on this one.

His performance is a mix of flawed, fearless and wild. Paula is a woman reeling from her impending divorce, striving to prove she can provide a normal life for her daughter, focusing on a high-profile job as a fact-checker at the local newspaper, all while struggling to reconcile the act of violence she witnessed in a digitally intimate moment.

The attack turns out to be a scam, however, and Paula soon has to juggle threatening calls from people demanding money, or else, and investigations from the unhelpful police detectives assigned to her case. So, as someone who deals with facts on a daily basis, she takes matters into her own hands and conducts some messy investigative work, only to find herself in the middle of not only a blackmail scheme, but also a murder mystery.

Maximum Fun Guaranteed doesn’t treat its subject matter lightly, whether it’s the history of sex work, the violence sprinkled throughout each episode, or the compounding emotional trauma Paula is subjected to as she tries to keep it together.

I should probably remind you that this is a comedy. It has a similar vibe to, say, HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant, which also follows a character who gets drawn into a murder plot and must make some unsavory decisions. The lightness comes from the series’ rapid montages, the brash techno soundtrack that accompanies the opening credits, and the jarring focus on random voices and telephone noises.

You could easily read this sentence and think I’m talking about a horror series, but there’s a fine line between laughs and scares. With David Gordon Green behind the camera – a director who has worked extensively in both genres – it all makes sense.

Then there’s the rest of the show’s cast. Murray Bartlett is a killerboth literally and figuratively, and his performance, which beautifully walks the sociopathic line between sinister and sincere, seems effortless. Jake Johnson plays Karl, Paula’s ex, and strays from his usual comedic routine to show a dramatic side that audiences rarely get to see.

The entire show is rounded out by standout performances from Kiarra Hamagami Goldberg and Charlie Hall, who play Paula’s chatty co-workers Geri and Rudy – a duo who get involved in all of Paula’s mayhem – and Dolly de Leon, who cuts through the nonsense by playing the delightfully deadpan detective. Sofia Gonzalez.

As I said earlier, the show is still in the middle of its first season, so I’m not here to talk about the direction of the story or its future in a potential season 2. That said, it left enough breadcrumbs and unraveled enough layers to hint at a larger conspiracy hidden beneath the crimes Paula is embroiled in. The show is addictive, so I’ll be surprised if we don’t get more episodes later.

Guaranteed maximum fun is never lost in the emotional depths of these characters, which is another way the series stays firmly in its comedic lane. It is a unique murder mystery lifted by the character work of its actors and the unfortunate circumstances that help build this story world. It’s windy, but also brutal. Hilarious, but also horrible. And since each episode is 30-40 minutes long, it’s a perfect little summer binge.